auronlu: (egads!)
While watching the prologue of The Hobbit, there was one unexpected item which caught my eye.

VERY minor spoilers:


Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned... )
auronlu: (Yuna's Final Aeon)
I have done a major edit-sweep of LHAD, to help me get all the canon back in my head before I embark on the big battle sequence.

Most edits were cosmetic. However, in response to reader-questions during the Shuyin-confrontation, I've revamped the Via Purifico chapter to make Lenne's cameo somewhat more clear (while still leaving an intentional ambiguity) as well as, "what happened to Maroda?" Hopefully that part of the story is now easier to follow, without losing the subtlety that [livejournal.com profile] cumuluscastle likes in some of my writing.

I'm still waffling over the use of Otherworld lyrics during the Shuyin fight. It was an experiment. I'm curious how many readers liked vs. were distracted by it.

I renamed the "Unraveling" chapter (viewing Yuna's sphere) to "Love Her and Despair". So many other plot-threads have developed that the meaning of the story's original title has been obscured. In that chapter, when Auron faces love and despair while viewing Yuna's sphere, the deepest kernel of the story pops out.

I love reader feedback -- it's amazing how much y'all have helped me refine and solve plot issues, even though the basic story and chapter outline have remained almost unchanged since chapter 14! [livejournal.com profile] mandyiam gets the prize for killing off a character I hadn't planned on killing: addition by subtraction. [livejournal.com profile] owlmoose, [profile] muggy_mountain and [livejournal.com profile] trekqueen are the Backstory Consultants. [livejournal.com profile] cumuluscastle is critic extraordinaire and post-production beta reader, since I'm too danged stubborn to have one.

I am still struggling to reconcile two sets of reader tastes: those who like subtlety versus those who want things spelled out more explicitly; and the readers who prefer 1200-1400 word chapters versus those who prefer 2000-4000. I keep waffling!

So, anyway. With apologies for the self-plug, let me wave the "Readers! Come and get it!" flag for a few of you who were clever enough to hold off until I'd polished the last few chapters.

Far Too Much Meta-babble about LHAD )
auronlu: (lucil)
Apart from the Lulu-as-Scary-Galadriel conceit, I generally keep my old and deep-seated LOTR fandom separate from my FF fanwork.

However, this particular stretch of the story is batting around a few Tolkienian motifs like a catnip mouse.

So I can't resist batting around a few analogies, even though they don't always map with very close matches.

Lucil - Elrond
Auron - Gandalf
Isaaru - Frodo
Pacce - Pippin
Nooj - Aragorn
Baralai - Boromir
Paine - Glorfindel
Shelinda - Galdor of the Havens
Cid - Gimli
Rikku - Legolas
Elma - Sam

I flipflopped Nooj and Baralai back and forth for a while: each has certain elements of both characters. (But Isaaru is really, in my mind, Tolkien!Faramir.)

Ack. Does this make Lulu Gollum?!

The chapter is nearly all dialog right now. Alas, I didn't get as far as I'd hoped this weekend.
auronlu: (Default)
Not exactly writer's block, I just have this problem that I've got all these loose ends, and the chapter AFTER the Battle of the Pelennor Fields or the Flight to the Ford is always rather patchy and forgettable. Lots of character business has to happen: people putting themselves back together, checking in, finding out what happened. At the same time plot must move forward. And one can't spend too long milling around.

I found myself skipping over description of setting because I had too much Talk to fit in, then realized that a) I have talking head syndrome, and b) I gave too much description to places like Home and Djose, where only a few chapters took place, whereas I've got an awful lot of stuff happening in Bevelle and in this new Houses of Healing Yuna's Cloister I added to the geography.


The Tolkien parallels are so blinkin' obvious. It's not on purpose. I just absorbed his patterns so much they keep cropping up.

I just finished Pelennor Fields/Flight to the Ford. (Except Auron didn't quite follow Théoden's path to its end; he jumped off the Bridge at Z'Ha'Dum instead.)

I'm now at Houses of Healing/Many Meetings, which is a hard chapter to write.

Then we have the Council of Elrond / The Last Debate. And somehow, in this chapter, along with dealing with all the battle-fallout, I need to establish my Elrond figure.

So anyway. Between that and dissertation, the next chapter of LHAD may take a while.
auronlu: (memories)
[livejournal.com profile] trekqueen, of course! Anyone else?

I just poked my nose back in my old haunt, the Lord of the Rings Plaza. The incredible hive of activity has died down a bit in the waning of the movie buzz, leaving diehards and genuine Tolkien fans. Even in its fading days 7 years after its founding, the plaza is still a huge LOTR community with stuff for everyone from casual/silly fans to lore geeks.

There is one RPG which is a historical reenactment of the Flight of the Noldor, and they need more bodies. Bodies who know and love Elder Days. Bodies who don't mind the fact that it's a family-friendly site (no slash, sowweee) but are willing to play Tolkien straight up.

Fëanor is just about to be killed by Gothmog, as soon as the Balrog logs in, and the sons of Fëanor will hasten up. The GM is in need of Noldor accompanying Fingolfin (can't believe more people aren't hanging out with Fingolfin, Turgon and baby Idril), Sindar to meet the Noldor at Mithrum, all kinds of minor characters, and heck, even named characters... you might even be able to snag Glorfindel, TQ!

Note: the way the plaza works, you just have ONE account, then write NPC: Name at the top of your post (or something like that) if you've got multiple characters. Multiple accounts a no-no.

Interested? Here's the GM's summary in the sign-up thread where you can introduce yourself and ask/suggest a character to RP. Quite possibly, Aig would even be happy for you to offer to play some of the unclaimed named characters, though I don't know which those are.

The sub-forum where the RPG is being hosted is Undying Lands, where we tend to RP Valinor plus origin-stories of the beginning of Middle-earth. The RPG thread is "Destiny's Way".

I haven't warned the GM I'm recruiting, but he's an old hand, and I'm sure he'd be glad of new faces.

Note that I am NOT known as Auronlu there. It should be obvious who I am, but I try never to have my plaza username and this one directly connected, so that the young folks who look up to me as an example (and/or people who know me through the plaza and might be offended) don't stumble across my smut.

Feel free to pass this onto anyone on your Flist for whom it makes sense.
auronlu: (ronin)
"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater." -- Haldir in Tolkien's LOTR


I was misremembering that quote while commenting about FFX's delicious layers of irony and aptitude for presenting façades. I just had to look it up to see it says "love" not "joy". Both nuances work.

Sometimes the characters in FFX have such brave façades, symbolized to me by Yuna's smile and to a lesser extent by blitzball, which lets people forget about Sin and be ordinary. I like how much of the early stretches of FFX shows people in this world living ordinary lives, despite what's lurking beyond the horizon.

Sometimes the façades turn out to be hollow, like Yevon, or sinister, like Seymour's courtliness.

But mostly there's just a lot of unspoken secrets because people don't want to dwell on regrets, or are stubbornly determined to enjoy laughter, innocence, and beauty even if they're going to die tomorrow. A very Epicurean world, in the original sense.

And most of all, there is so much unspoken love in that game. It usually manifests as loyalty. In the Japanese version, Yuna never even says "I love you"; she says "thank you". The root motivation of every single member of her party is love, and not one of them ever says the word, except when Lulu's discussing marriage without love, and Auron tells Tidus, "Jecht loved you. He just didn't know how to say it." Jecht isn'the only one!
 
auronlu: (dork)
Disclaimer: My version of Legolas isn't the superhero pretty boy, it's the book version. But I realize "still the prettiest" has become part of his mythology. ;)

Drabble challenge for [livejournal.com profile] saharasnow who requested the character "Legolas" and the theme "comb".

Title: "Drabbles, Drabbles in the Deep..."
Fandom: LOTR
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Summary: Excerpt from a recently-uncovered early draft of the "Journey in the Dark" chapter of FOTR

Doom, doom. )

December 2019

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